This invention relates to an electronic filing device for storing an image data and a facsimile data and, particularly to a magnetic tape recording device employing a digital audio tape (hereinafter referred to as a DAT) as a storage medium.
In these years, there have been widely used optical disks employing a laser, photoelectromagnetic disks, magnetic disks such as a fixed disk and a floppy disk, and magnetic tapes, etc. in computers or like electronic filing devices. Particularly recently, there has been proposed a magnetic tape recording device including a digital audio tape recorder (DAT recorder) of the rotary head type as an exchangeable and large capacity storage medium as in Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 1-290148.
The above publication teaches a concept of recording data other than acoustic data using a magnetic tape recording device designed to record the acoustic data. In this device, an image information is recorded on a DAT in accordance with a format standard (EIAJ CP-2305) for recording the acoustic data. Further, when the image information is recorded using this device, the DAT should be formatted in advance so as to attain a record region similar to the magnetic disk. This device is incapable of recording the image information on a raw tape while formatting the same. Due to an azimuth angle defined between the magnetic head and the DAT, the DAT is formatted in advance at the same speed as the data is recorded on the DAT. For instance, in the case of a 120 minutes DAT, it takes 120 minutes to format the DAT. Accordingly, this device requires a long time to format the DAT when a new tape is used, thereby exceedingly reducing the operability thereof.
A leading end portion of the tape is often uncovered by a cartridge and is exposed to the air, which may cause deterioration in the quality of contents recorded on the tape. In view of this, according to the above format standard, a region having a specified size following a leading end of the DAT (hereinafter referred to as a read-in region) is set as an empty region, and thereby the acoustic data is recordable on the DAT after the read-in region.
Accordingly, when the image information is recorded, the image information is sequentially recorded together with the administrative information thereof. In the case of carrying out the filing of the image information, such as recording of a new image information and correction of the already recorded image information, the administrative information is read from the loaded DAT and the image information is filed based on this administrative information. Further, discrimination is made whether the loaded DAT is a new one or a used one based on the presence or absence of the administrative information. This is because the administrative information is not recorded on the loaded DAT when the loaded DAT is a new one.
The above discrimination is made based on the presence or absence of the administrative information recorded after the read-in region. Thus, when the new DAT is loaded, it takes time (at least 17 seconds) to make the above discrimination because the empty read-in region has to be scanned to read the administrative information. Further, when it is discriminated that the new DAT is loaded, the DAT should be formatted in accordance with a specified format so as to record an initial administrative information and to set a record region. Therefore, the above recording device suffers the inconvenience that the filing operation cannot be started smoothly in a short time.